


henhouse dominoes

by supinetothestars



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anger Management, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, M/M, Miscommunication, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26221690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars/pseuds/supinetothestars
Summary: This is how Tea Boy gets his name: Sokka is entering the shop for the second time, two days after he first tripped over one of the chairs, and this time he gets about five steps in before a completely separate obstacle bowls him over: a scruffy looking older teenage boy holding a tray of teacups walks straight into him, disrupting the glasses perched on his tray and sending a splatter of cold tea down Sokka’s front. Both of them curse loudly and stumble backwards.“Watch where you’re going,” the other boy snarls, but he looks dismayed, wide-eyed - the left one, anyway, right one squinted shut by a mottled purple scar - and his breathing has picked up speed.“Dude, I’m so sorry, shit, lemme help clean up,” Sokka says, all in a rush, even though he wasn’t the one that walked into the other and he’s also got cold tea down his favorite Chong’s World Tour 2018: Cave of Two Lovers t-shirt and really, he’s not the one who should be apologizing.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 62
Kudos: 235





	1. Chapter 1

Sokka has a problem. 

Sokka has many problems, in fact, most of them lined up all neatly like dominoes in a henhouse. Rows and rows, all waiting for the slightest tap before they crumble, and he with them - he’s just waiting for one of the hens to start pecking. 

He’s nicknamed his most recent problem Tea Boy. This is because Tea Boy has no nametag, but he does have an excessive abundance of tea.  _ So _ much tea. Gallons of it, cups after cups of it. Sokka has yet to see him not holding a tea tray.

That might have something to do with the working in a tea shop thing. Because Tea Boy does, in fact, work in a tea shop.  _ The Jasmine Dragon _ , it’s called; a comfortable little two-story neatly nestled in a Ba Sing Se streetcorner only half a block from Sokka’s house. The first story dips into the ground, sheltered behind a short concrete staircase, and behind it is a glass shelf of greenery.

It was these plants that first drew Sokka in: dozens of them, lush and green and thriving, hanging from the ceiling or piled on counters behind the panelled glass front wall of the shop. Everything in the interior - from the dark wooden floors to the pale concrete walls - is tinted with soft, dappled green light from the sunlight that filters through the fern leaves. The right side of the shop has a black chalkboard menu, filled with assorted tea options or pastries, whereas the left has a counter overlooking a glass window into an alleyway. 

The first time Sokka had entered _The_ _Jasmine Dragon_ he’d been so busy staring at the row of plants he’d nearly tripped over one of the cushioned iron-wire chairs. He’d caught himself on a table, but not without a clatter loud enough to attract the attention of the elderly man pouring tea behind the far counter.

“Oh! Are you alright?” the man had called, voice cutting through the quiet murmur of the five or six patrons scattered across the shop. He sounded concerned, but his expression melted into one of humor as Sokka righted himself and sent an awkward thumbs-up his way.

That, as Sokka would come to learn, was Iroh. Iroh was a kind man, continually in good humor, who owned the tea shop and ran it alongside his nephew.

His nephew, Tea Boy.

This is how Tea Boy gets his name: Sokka is entering the shop for the second time, two days after he first tripped over one of the chairs, and this time he gets about five steps in before a completely separate obstacle bowls him over: a scruffy looking older teenage boy holding a tray of teacups walks straight into him, disrupting the glasses perched on his tray and sending a splatter of cold tea down Sokka’s front. Both of them curse loudly and stumble backwards. 

“Watch where you’re  _ going _ ,” the other boy snarls, but he looks dismayed, wide-eyed - the left one, anyway, right one squinted shut by a mottled purple scar - and his breathing has picked up speed.

“Dude, I’m so sorry, shit, lemme help clean up,” Sokka says, all in a rush, even though he wasn’t the one that walked into the other and he’s also got cold tea down his favorite  _ Chong’s World Tour 2018: Cave of Two Lovers _ t-shirt and really, he’s not the one who should be apologizing.

The boy with the tea -  _ Tea Boy _ , Sokka thinks - seems to realize this, because a split second later his anger fades away. “Shit,” Tea Boy says. “Sorry. That was my fault. That was totally my fault, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t mean to. Fuck. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sokka assures him. He shifts and feels cold tea dripping through his sneakers into a puddle on the floor. “It was cold and all, I’m fine - do you need help, uh, cleaning this up? I can-”

“No,” Tea Boy snaps, so sharply Sokka feels a little wounded. “I mean,” he continues, softer, this time - “Thank you, but no, I can do it. And, uh, you can - you can have tea on the house today, and, I mean, forever, and again - I’m really sorry-”

Sokka gets the crawly feeling he gets whenever someone takes longer than two seconds flat apologizing to him. He scrambles to cut Tea Boy off before he can keep going. “That’s okay, really,” he says. “I’ll be over by the, uh, counter-” he jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the register. 

“Yeah,” Tea Boy says, setting his tea tray on an empty table. “Yeah, okay.”

Sokka swivels around and heads for the counter, but not before catching one last glimpse of Tea Boy: he’s running an exhausted hand through his hair, tilting his face up into a shaft of light jutting through the wall of plants. His eyes look like molten gold in the sunbeam’s ray. 

It’s one moment, a second long in entirety, barely one tick of the clock. It leaves Sokka stunned for the rest of the evening.

~~~

It’s not like coming to the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ doesn’t have any sort of practical benefit. It’s a lovely shop, and usually quiet in the early hours of the morning, which means that Sokka can come in before his job at a local bike shop and work on his online engineering classes over a steaming cup of jasmine tea or a biscuit. Tea Boy is often at the register - him or his uncle, Iroh - and though Sokka insists on paying after the debacle of his second visit, he notices Tea Boy always manages to slip a little extra change back to him, as if still paying penance for the incident with the tea tray.

So all in all, it’s a good place to study, free from Katara’s messy morning routine or their grandmother’s loud singing. It’s nice enough that Sokka can almost convince himself that’s the only reason he’s coming: for the tea and the air that smells like plants and the soft background noise of boiling water and clattering teacups.

Almost.

Because he can’t ignore the other factor in his constant visits to the shop, the thing that keeps him lingering until he’s almost late to the bike shop, and burns his tongue every other day as he sips too-hot tea in distraction: 

Tea Boy.

Beautiful, perfect, clumsily gorgeous Tea Boy.

Because Sokka’s interest didn’t just begin and end with that brief, lingering moment of golden sunlight in the other boy’s eyes. It  _ began _ with that, sure, but Sokka’s brain takes that interest and runs with it: the next day he comes in, it’s the curve of the other boy’s jaw he notices, and the way his smile looks when his uncle makes yet another joke about tea. 

The fifth day Sokka comes in - half drenched from pouring rain, clad in a thick fur raincoat to ward against the cold - he finds the shop almost entirely empty, but for Tea Boy and Iroh, milling about near the counter. Iroh looks delighted to see Sokka, face lighting up. 

“My dear boy!” he calls out, voice carrying across the shop, “How good to have a customer! Business has been slow today, no doubt a cause of the weather - but you are here now, which is wonderful. Would you like some tea, perhaps? Or a pastry?”

“Uh, some Jasmine, maybe?” Sokka asks, coming to a halt at the counter and shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Iroh smiles and takes the order. Sokka pays for the tea up-front and slings his bag off his shoulder, stepping up to the bar overlooking the window as Iroh disappears into the back to prepare the drink.

It takes him a few minutes to set everything up. He’s been working on a project for the ever-looming end of his online Engineering class’s first semester, one that involves a complicated row of equations in a Google spreadsheet and several scrapped blueprints. He opens his laptop to the spreadsheet and takes to sketching out his latest blueprint draft on blue-lined graph paper. He loves working on blueprints - there’s something about it that just makes it feel as though time is speeding by. 

Perhaps that’s why he’s already forgotten he even ordered tea when Tea Boy brings it to the counter a few moments later. A shadow comes over his paper and he glances up, startled, only to find Tea Boy standing a foot or so away with a tray, eyes trained on his blueprints.

“Hey,” Tea Boy says, “Sorry, I thought I’d bring it over - you looked pretty busy and I didn’t want to interrupt. Guess I kind of did anyway, though.”

“You’re fine,” Sokka says hastily, setting down his pencil. “Uh, thanks.”

Tea Boy takes the teacup from the tray and nudges it across the counter towards Sokka. He’s still staring at the blueprints. “That looks, uh, really cool,” he says, nodding towards them. “Whatever you’re working on.”

Sokka’s face lights up. He hasn’t shown anyone his blueprints, not yet, but he’s been working on them for two weeks now and thinks they’re really starting to come together. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” Tea Boy says, a smile edging the corners of his mouth. “It looks like some sort of a… a balloon?”

“Yeah! A hot air balloon designed for warfare,” Sokka says excitedly. “A little wild, I know, but to be fair they said we could be creative in the project requirements - I’ve gotten pretty far with it, too, I think it’s got real potential. It better, anyway, because the end of semester’s coming up like wildfire.”

Tea Boy shifts closer to Sokka to get a better view, standing next to his stool and peering down at the graph paper spread across the counter. “That’s...wow,” he says, sounding genuinely impressed. “Is this for a class project? What school do you go to?”

“Oh, I, uh, graduated from Ba Sing Se High,” Sokka says, referencing the local public high school. “That was a year ago, this is for an online engineering class I’m taking.” He cuts himself off before he can delve into an explanation. He feels like one is needed - something that covers how he couldn’t face the prospect of leaving the city to attend a local college, not when his sister and friends and grandmother and everyone he has left is still in the city. Something about how he had some of the best STEM grades of anyone in his class and also two separate suspensions for fighting other students - self defense, not that anyone had bothered to ask - and most colleges probably never bothered to read past that bit of his application. Something that explains why he’s still here, in the city, living with his family despite being well past graduation.

But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he looks back over at Tea Boy, who looks over at him, and gives a little smile that makes Sokka’s breath catch like there’s honey in his throat.

“That’s really cool,” Tea Boy says. “I should go -” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, to where a few bedraggled, sopping wet customers are milling about by the register - “but let me know how it goes, alright?”

“You got it,” Sokka says, and smiles for the rest of the day.

Tea Boy wasn’t lying; his interest in Sokka’s blueprints lasts into the next day, when he asks for an update on Sokka’s progress (“I’ve got an updated hydraulics system, but I’m gonna have to rework a few of the dimensions for the cannons, they’re too heavy,” Sokka tells him), or the day after that, when he leans over Sokka’s shoulder and comments on how badass the updated basket design looks. Every time they talk, Sokka learns a little bit more about him: he’s nineteen, the same age as Sokka, and lives with his uncle in the upper floor of the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ ; he doesn’t go to any college, but he works the tea shop in the mornings and is thinking about starting some classes in the spring; he’s a cat person, but likes some dogs, and he secretly doesn’t even like tea all that much, though it’s alright when Uncle makes it.

Sokka learns some things from overhearing conversations around the shop, too. For one, Tea Boy isn’t usually half as levelheaded as he is with Sokka or Iroh. A week into his visits of the  _ Jasmine Dragon,  _ Sokka has already witnessed him nearly throw hands with unruly customers on almost four separate occasions. Each time, without fail, Iroh will emerge from the back of the shop and escort him into the back, all smiles and jokes, and take over the register for long enough that Tea Boy can calm down.

The only thing Sokka doesn’t know is Tea Boy’s name.

That may prove to be an issue. But it will be one Sokka can overcome, at any rate; he’s sure that if he sticks it through long enough, pretends that he’s only saying Tea Boy to be funny or ironic, he’ll figure out the real name. Someone will have to say it, at some point; Iroh will stop calling him ‘nephew’, or a customer will come in who knows the right address and Sokka will happen to overhear. It will happen, Sokka is sure of it; he just has to wait.

And he can wait. He has all the time in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was betaed by fensandmarshes to whom i owe my life


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toph really likes the Jasmine Dragon.

Toph really likes the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ .

It’s funny, really, because Toph doesn’t even like tea all that much. It’s too watery, or if it’s not too watery it’s too strong, and if it’s not too strong it’s bitter, or if it’s not bitter it’s so sugary tasting it makes her want to bite her tongue off. There’s no way for tea to win, in her book. She’ll take a good pure black coffee over a cup of tea any day.

And yet somehow, hanging out in the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ is quickly becoming one of her favorite pastimes, right in between kicking people’s asses on the wrestling mat and listening to heavy metal rock music to make her parents angry (yes, she’s graduated, but she’s still not above a little healthy rebellion). It’s something about the atmosphere of the place. She can’t see, so she could care less if it’s pretty - but it  _ smells  _ good, all warm sugary chai blending with bitter green tea and the thick scent of greenery by the entrance, and it  _ sounds _ good, like softly burbling water and quietly clattering teacups - and it even kind of  _ feels _ good, when she stands near the kitchen and feels the warm steam of the kettles drifting over her face. 

And there’s Iroh, of course.

She likes Iroh. She surprises herself by liking Iroh, because kind old men are usually the sort of people she’s tempted to wack with her cane. But she does like him, all the same. He doesn’t talk to her the way most old people do, doesn’t croon or go  _ oh, poor dear, do you need any help _ or  _ are your parents around, I don’t want you getting hurt _ . He’s kind without acting as though she should be in a baby stroller, and what’s more, he’s  _ very _ good at Pai Sho.

Toph has yet to meet someone as good at Pai Sho as Iroh (Uncle Iroh, as some of the patrons of the shop have taken to calling him, for whatever reason). Or, more accurately, she has yet to meet someone as good at Pai Sho as Uncle Iroh who doesn’t purposely lose when pitted against someone like Toph. It’s good, because while she’s lost every game so far, the matches get closer every time. 

Iroh is the sort of person to think aloud when playing Pai Sho. It’s good, because she usually needs his help to play - even when she feels over the board, lightly running her fingers along it to detect which pieces are where, Iroh helps by describing the layout so she can imagine it more firmly in her mind. His descriptions are a bit too colorful, at times (“I asked you to tell me where your piece is, not give an inspirational bit of poetry about soldiers at war,” she grouches more than once) but they’re always useful. And they’re good enough that every time she visits, she feels closer to winning.

Toph met Iroh almost entirely by chance. She’d decided to visit the Jasmine Dragon after Sokka said something about going there in the mornings to study - there was an odd note to his voice when he said it, too, as though distracted by the thought - and she thought she’d pay a visit with Aang, only Aang got distracted upon finding a video game store next door to the shop and left as soon as she knew where she was going. 

Anything that happened after was entirely Aang’s fault for wandering off. 

It was pretty easy for Toph to make it down the short row of a dozen or so iron-wire chairs and barstools to the counter. The shop was mostly empty, since this time of day most people were at work - so it was also pretty easy for her to hear the familiar clatter of Pai Sho tiles on the counter to the right of the register. Iroh was standing there, having just done something with the board, and when he spotted Toph he greeted her with a warm “Hello there! Can I help you?”

“That noise,” she said, with a slight frown. “Is it a game?”

“Good ear! It’s a game of Pai Sho,” he confirmed, his smile audible in his tone. “I had started it with my nephew, but unfortunately, he’s wandered off - I don’t believe I’ll be able to finish it this evening, so I was about to clean it up.”

Toph tilted her head, still frowning. “Who’s winning?”

“Pardon?”

“Who’s winning?”  
“Oh,” Iroh said, sounding startled. “Well, I don’t like to count my chickens before they’re hatched, but - as much as I love my darling nephew, Pai Sho is not his strong suit. He’s rather dug himself in a hole at this point and I doubt there’s much coming back.”

Toph smirked. “Wanna bet?”

When Aang had found her twenty minutes later she’d pulled a chair up to the counter and was deep in contemplation over her last surviving piece. She lost, in the end, but made a good run of it; even Iroh said so, though she’d suspected he would say that even if she’d eaten half the pieces and choked.

And she had been right. Iroh is  _ ridiculously _ supportive, even when Toph’s patience wears thin and she tells him he can shove his patronizing where the light don’t shine. He sounded amused, at that, but also assured her that he wasn’t being patronizing, would never: “I genuinely am impressed with your talent, dear!” 

Pshhht. Bullshit.

But at any rate, it’s enough to make her visits to the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ a weekly occurrence. Toph goes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, right around one A.M., and she gets a different friend to drive her each time.

Katara is concerned by this development. “I thought you didn’t like tea,” she says, when Toph first requests a ride. 

“I thought you weren’t nosy,” Toph flings back, even though it’s not true - Katara’s always nosy; it’s one of her primary character traits. She feels bad after saying it, even though Katara’s  _ hmph _ doesn’t sound that upset, so she puts on music she knows Katara likes, just to be extra nice.

The fourth time Toph visits the  _ Jasmine Dragon -  _ on a rainy, dreary Wednesday when the city smells like gasoline and petrichor - there’s someone new there. Toph knows because she knows the voices of all the employees, and the boy who stands behind the counter and awkwardly informs her that  _ Iroh is out for the day, he’s sick with the flu, he said someone might drop by and gave his sincere apologies in advance _ , has not been there at any point in Toph’s memory; he has never served her tea, or called to Iroh from the back room, or mopped the counters with a lemon-scented shiner as Iroh worried over a move. 

Toph tells him as much. “You’re new,” she says, with a fair amount of certainty, and she can hear him frowning at her.

“No, uh, I’m not,” he says. “I usually work in the mornings, though. I just agreed to fill in for Uncle.”

“Uncle?”

“I’m Uncle Iroh’s nephew,” he explains, and suddenly things slot in place. Toph grins at him.

“I  _ know  _ you,” she says, triumphant. “Well, no I don’t, but. I know  _ of _ you. Uncle says he hates playing Pai Sho with you because you’re so awful at it.”

“He did?” Nephew-boy asks, and he actually sounds a little sad. 

Toph backtracks; she hadn’t expected him to take that  _ seriously _ . “No, dumbass,” she tells him, “he said he loves you very much but also, you’re awful at Pai Sho.”

“Oh,” Nephew-boy says, relieved. “Yeah, he’s right.”

Toph smirks, and is struck by inspiration. “Hey, look, you said you were filling in for Iroh, yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“Iroh’s shift ends in five minutes,” Toph says. “He always plays Pai Sho with me after. You really want to do his job, let’s see how fast I can beat you.”

Nephew Boy is silent for a moment, but Toph already knows she’s got him hooked.

~~~

He really is awful at Pai Sho. It takes Toph all of five minutes to win, and he sounds frustrated the entire time, like he can see how bad he’s doing and just can’t fix it. Toph reaches over the counter to pat him on the shoulder awkwardly once they’re done playing, just to reassure him.

“This was fun,” she says, and almost means it - it’s reassuring to recall that she actually can win the game, when not pitted against a master like Iroh. “You seem nice; maybe next time Iroh’s out bring a game of shoots and ladders, or something.”

“Yeah, okay,” Nephew-Boy says. Toph starts to turn towards the door, only to pause and ask for his name right before walking away.

“Zuko,” he tells her.

It’s not until she’s on the street that the recognition hits.

~~~

At the end of his sophomore year of high school, Aang was reigning champion of all four of Ba Sing Se’s martial arts teams. He was practically  _ worshipped _ , school wide; he was the godlike force that had single handedly brought their teams back from practical extinction at the hands of the rival Caldera Academy’s ruthless training regimes. They wrote an article about him in the school newspaper -  _ a Ba Sing Se Sophomore has single-handedly risen to the top of all four martial arts teams that the local public school has to offer _ , it began, and those words had been quoted at Aang for a week after it was published.

At the beginning of his junior year of high school, Aang was a fallen angel - forgotten by those who had worshipped his skill and resented by those who had relied on it. His former teammates sent him snarling, bitter glances in the halls; his coaches wouldn’t look him in the eye, and the few times when one of his classmates recognized him for the former glory of the entire school, they only ever had one thing to ask: “Why’d you quit?”

Aang never gave them a real answer. He doesn’t know what to say, really, because he knows the truth would only confuse them further, would only twist their looks of disbelief into looks of disdain:

Aang had hated it. All of it. He’d hated the cheering at the rallies, the feeling of eyes on his neck wherever he went, the flighty feeling his heart got when he remembered the whole school had its eyes on his every move. 

Most of all, he hated winning.

The majority of Ba Sing Se’s martial arts competitions had been with the local private school. Caldera Academy, it was called, and it was as led by old money as it was populated by old money. Headmaster Ozai, a forbidding old man who expelled unsavory students at a rate some would call excessive and most would call psychopathic, had a son at the head of the  Northern Shaolin kung fu team. 

When Aang first signed up for a martial arts team at the beginning of freshman year, Zuko was a sophomore and the  kung fu prodigy of his school. He dominated every match with a kind of intensity that genuinely frightened his opponents, and was positively  _ ruthless _ on the mat; Aang’s teammates reported aching joints for days after matches. Every competition he attended, Zuko’s father would sit at the back of the bleachers in the auditorium, dressed in full formal attire, and watch his son fight with an imperious eye that tended to make Zuko’s opponents quake in their robes. (Katara always said Ozai must really care about Zuko, to attend every match. But as someone who must have stood on that  Northern Shaolin kung fu mat hundreds of times under Ozai’s watchful glare, all Aang could ever feel in Ozai’s presence was singed.)

Aang’s victories really got to Zuko, whether he intended them to or not. Zuko hated Aang with a fervor usually reserved for soldiers at opposite sides of a war. He nearly got pulled off the mat for breaking regulation countless times, and even more frequently would run into Aang after a match only to bear down on him - usually surrounded by a posse of teammates or his younger sister, Azula - and sneer threats or taunts that often left Aang shaking and terrified. He broke Aang’s window the night before a match, once, leaving shards of shattered glass all over the floor that they had to pick out of the floorboards for weeks after. They couldn’t prove it was him, not without evidence - but he was the only one who would’ve done it. 

It felt like war.

It wasn’t war. Aang knew this, and yet the intensity of every match felt like a weight on his shoulders in a way it hadn’t before he’d joined the teams. Fighting had been a source of peace, of relaxation; a rare way for Aang to find his sense of self after years of being tossed between foster homes stripped it away.

Competition changed that. It took that away. Aang hated every moment of it. There were good parts, sure - meeting Katara on the Tai Chi Chuan team and befriending her brother Sokka, bumping into Toph at a local  Hung Ga kung fu practice ring - but the experience wasn’t one anyone could pay Aang to relive.

This was the first year Aang hadn’t fought. It was also the first year Zuko hadn’t fought, having graduated and likely been shipped away to a college the likes of which Aang will never be able to afford. His sister Azula had taken his place on the mat, and without Aang’s opposition she was effortlessly mowing down Ba Sing Se High’s  Northern Shaolin kung fu  team.

Aang hasn’t heard about Zuko in months. He’s almost managed to let the boy slide from his memory entirely, which is why it’s such a nasty shock when Toph lifts her head from his foster family’s couch Wednesday night and interrupts his game of Zelda to ask “Hey, Aang, do you know what happened to Zuko? That kung fu kid you and Katara used to bitch about?”

The name startles Aang so badly his character’s hanglider jerks and smashes into a tree. He pauses the game and turns around, eyes wide. Toph, sprawled on her back across the couch with half a set of earbuds in, tilts her head towards his and quirks an eyebrow.

“Um,” Aang stammers. “Um, no, I haven’t seen him since he graduated. Why? Is he back? Have you seen him? Is he mad at me? Do I need to move away?”

Toph frowns. “That escalated quickly.”

“Sorry,” Aang apologizes, and lapses into silence.

“I was just  _ wondering _ ,” Toph says, “but  _ clearly _ that’s a sensitive topic, so I guess I’ll just leave it be.”

“Sorry,” Aang repeats. “I just haven’t heard about him in ages, I guess you startled me.”

“I thought I heard someone mention him today.” Toph shrugs. “I guess I probably misheard.”

“Yeah,” Aang mumbles. “Yeah, probably.”

~~~

Sokka finds out Tea Boy’s name on a sunny Thursday morning when, right as he begins to lay out his blueprints and papers on a sturdy wooden table near the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ counter, Toph Beifong surges through the tea shop doors and makes a bee-line towards the back of the shop. Tea Boy, sitting at a stool behind the register and looking exceptionally bored, glanced up at Toph in surprise and looks about to say something when Sokka glances behind him and, enthusiastic in his glee at seeing another human being in the shop so early in the morning, drops his pencil with a clatter and shouts “ _ Toph!”  _

Toph skids to a halt a few feet from Sokka, cane falling limply to her side, and tilts her head towards the source of the noise. “Sokka?” she asks, sounding surprised. 

“Yeah!” Sokka cries, then consciously curbs his enthusiasm and says, more solemnly, “Hey, Toph, I didn’t know you went here.”

“Yeah, I do, like, a lot,” she responds, a suspicious expression creeping onto her face. “What are  _ you _ doing here?”

“Working out the firepower potential of an unladen hot air balloon warship,” Sokka says airily. “You know, the usual. What about  _ you?” _

“I’m talking to Zuko,” she says, so casually Sokka almost falls out of his chair. He stares at her, mouth falling slightly open.

“Zuko?” He repeats. “You’re talking to  _ Zuko _ ? That - that utter asshole from high school, the one that fucked with all the kung fu tournaments? Who the fuck would ever want to talk to  _ him? _ ” He glances around wildly, as if expecting to find Zuko standing right behind him, ready to pour hot tea down the back of his shirt.

“Yeah,” Toph says slowly. “ _ That _ Zuko. He works mornings, I thought he’d be here?”

Sokka stares at her blankly for a long moment trying and failing to parse her meaning. And then-

“Hey,” Tea Boy says quietly. “I’m at the counter, Toph. A few feet in front of you.”

Sokka feels his entire body go cold, like he’s been dunked in ice. A numb tingling feeling travels from the tips of his fingers up to his cheeks, where he feels his face blush red as he stares in absolute horror at Tea Boy.

Zuko.

His crush, who Sokka just loudly called an asshole. His crush, who is now claiming to be the one and only Zuko, the terror of Aang’s two year stint into high school martial arts. The same bully who had crossed countless lines of basic moral decency in his crusade to keep Aang from beating him in  kung fu tournaments. His crush, who - looks paler, all the sudden, and is curling his shoulders and hunching slightly upon himself as if the act will actually make him small enough to slip away from Sokka’s wide-eyed, horrified gaze. Zuko is staring at the counter, now, head bowed to dutifully avoid Sokka’s eyes. 

He looks different. Sokka had never really gotten a good look at Zuko, back when he was champion of the Caldera Academy  Northern Shaolin kung fu  team - he always got a bad seat in the bleachers, and it was impossible to get a good view of faces through the crowd. But even so - in Sokka’s mind, Zuko had always been a cold, frigid thing, one of those one-dimensional high school bullies whose short-lived stints of antagonism were free of emotion or remorse. The Zuko in Sokka’s memories had pristine, unmarred pale skin and a neatly bound black ponytail and an expression of permanent foul distaste for the likes of Ba Sing Se High students.

That memory was not the boy now standing behind the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ cashier counter. The boy standing behind the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ cashier counter has a mottled scar marring the right side of his face and shaggy, uneven black hair falling around his face and the kind of tight, unhappy expression that conveys his deep desire to be anywhere but where he is. 

Sokka looks at this boy, and his heart does a funny little skippy thing that still isn’t enough to bring feeling back into his numb fingertips. 

“Nice going, Sokka,” Toph says drily, after a full ten seconds of awkward silence. “You really outdid yourself this time.” She snorts, shakes her head, and stomps up to the counter, where she uses her cane to tap a path around the edges and into the doorway of the mostly empty kitchen. “Come on, Zuko, we need to talk,” she calls over her shoulder, and Zuko gives Sokka one last fleeting, guilty look before disappearing behind Toph into the swinging kitchen doors. 

Sokka comes, gradually, to the concerning realization that he may have fucked up.

~~~

Zuko sounds a bit like a kicked puppy, after Sokka’s outburst in the main room of the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ , though Toph can tell he’s trying to hide it. They’re standing in the kitchen, where the quiet hiss of kettles leaves a hazy steam that fills the room with warm fog. There are footsteps as someone steps around attending to the teacups, and Toph is slightly disconcerted - she’d hoped to find somewhere private.

“My uncle is out, if you want to talk in his office,” Zuko offers awkwardly, seeming to sense her discomfort. Toph nods her assent. He leads her by the arm through the kitchen into the office, where the quiet thump of the door closing behind them cuts out the hiss of boiling water.

“Um,” Zuko says, and Toph can hear him swiveling to face her. “Is there anything in particular you wanted to talk about, or.”

Toph’s quiet for a moment, milling on how to start, and finally decides to point out the obvious: “You’re Zuko.”

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees awkwardly. “I take it you and - and Sokka know me, then. Knew me.”

He sounds dejected, and his voice stumbles a little over Sokka’s name as if crossing rough terrain. Toph doesn’t know what to make of that, so she plunges forward regardless. “My friends knew you in high school,” she says, folding her arms over her chest while clutching her cane loosely in one hand. “You fought for Caldera Academy’s kung fu team.”

“I did,” he agrees. “Did you attend Caldera Academy? I’m sorry, I don’t remember very many people from high school -”

One of Toph’s many skills is that she can tell a lie when she hears one, and that fluid, seamless transition into explaining Zuko’s forgetfulness is most definitely a practiced lie. But perhaps he just doesn’t enjoy reconnecting with his Caldera Academy classmates.

“Nope,” she says. “I was homeschooled. My friends went to Ba Sing Se High, though, and they had  _ so many _ stories about you. You know once you and your sister threatened to sell my friend Aang’s dog Appa to a dogfighting ring? I mean, it’s a stupid ass sounding threat, but he was terrified all week. Wouldn’t leave Appa’s side - tried to bring him to school, almost. I had to petsit a  _ lot _ . Pretty fucked up threat to make towards a kid, if you ask me.”

Zuko’s silent for a long moment, as though processing what she’s said. “ _ You -  _ you knew - know Aang,” he says, and then, voice growing angry - “So you dragged me back here just to bring all that up again? What are you going to do, fucking - try and get Uncle to fire me and kick me out? Get me convicted with something? Or go complaining to Oz -”

He cuts himself off abruptly, breathing heavily through his nose.

“No,” Toph scoffs. “ _ Spirits _ , defensive much?”

“I -” Zuko starts, then cuts himself off, and is silent for a moment before continuing. “I’m sorry,” he manages, sounding like he can barely form the words. “I shouldn’t have - jumped to conclusions.”

“You apologize like you’re physically in pain.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says again, slightly easier this time. “This is just - it’s a hard thing for me to, to talk about -” He cuts himself off again. Toph is almost irritated - this boy’s sentences are all jutting edges and plunging cliffs. “I’ve done my best to… put high school behind me. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not, no,” Toph hums. “I mean, you did some pretty fucked up things, yeah?”

“I did,” he agrees, voice somewhat steadier, if still downcast. “It was fucked up.”

Toph tilts her head, expecting to hear a false note to the admission. Instead, all she can hear is the way his breathing has sped up, almost minutely, even as his voice remains genuine.

“If you know that, why’d you do it?” 

Toph hears a click as Zuko swallows. “I was a kid,” he starts, voice hesitant. “I - I had a fucked up way of thinking so I did some fucked up things. I think I’ve changed, since then - I’ve tried. I really have. But that doesn’t fix what happened.”

“It doesn’t,” Toph agrees, and she hears a sharp exhale, as though she’d punched Zuko in the gut. 

“I’m sorry, if that means anything,” Zuko murmurs. Voice soft, but loud enough it holds steady in the air of the office, mingling with the muffled hum of teakettles and boiling tea.

Toph tilts her head. Listening. His breathing, still fast, is more controlled now, as though he’s making an effort to keep it steady, and his voice is heavy with laden regret.

“It does,” she says, and is surprised to find it’s true. “It does mean something.”

Zuko lets out a heavy breath. “I -  _ thank you _ .”

“I’m not the person you need to apologize to, though,” Toph points out. “I’m not the one you bullied for two years and I’m really not the one whose accepting that apology means jackshit.”

“I - you want me to talk to Aang?”

“And Katara,” Toph says. “They deserve some closure, okay?”

There’s a long silence filled with Zuko’s practically tangible anxiety. 

Toph sighs. “Look,” she says. “Mull over it, okay? And tell me when you’re ready. I hope you will be. I’ll talk to them about it.”

She turns towards the office door, tapping her cane in front of her, and leaves Zuko alone with his thoughts.

At seven fifty-three that afternoon, twenty-three minutes after the end of Sokka’s shift at the bike shop, Toph comes home from a day spent about the city to find Sokka waiting by her door. He calls her name, sounding like a guilty dog slouching home after having ran away, and immediately launches into a series of questions about what had happened to Zuko after the two of them had talked.

“He didn’t come back out of the kitchen,” Sokka explained, “and I had to go to work, but - I just, I wanted to see what - what did he say? I didn’t know it was him, I swear -”

“Shh,” Toph shushes. “One query at a time, loverboy.”

“I -” Sokka stammers for a few moments. “ _ Loverboy _ ? That’s not even -  _ ugh _ \- look, I just wanted to know what you two talked about.”

“I told him he’d done some fucky things, and he agreed,” Toph tells Sokka, crossing her arms. “And then I told him he needed to apologize to the people he hurt and he agreed.”

“He’s gonna  _ apologize? _ To who, Aang?”

“And Katara.”

“Huh,” Sokka marvels. “That doesn’t sound like the Zuko that Aang and Katara always mentioned.”

“He said he was trying to change,” Toph says, and can almost feel the intensity of Sokka’s stare.

There’s a lapse of silence for a moment, and then Sokka starts: “Did he -” He stops. “I mean, did - did Zuko -”

Toph is reminded of her irritation at Zuko’s stuttering, dead-end sentences. “Spit it out, Sokka,” she says, weary.

“Did he mention? What I said?”

“No,” Toph says, and hears Sokka exhale. “But he did sound like a kicked puppy the whole time, so congratulations. You succeeded.”

“No!” Sokka defends, with a surprising level of emphasis. “ _ No _ , I didn’t mean to - I didn’t know that was Zuko, honest. I never got his name.”

“Seem awfully invested in this for a guy whose name you don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Sokka mopes. “I guess.”

Toph is silent for a moment, analyzing his tone. When he doesn’t budge, she relents at long last.

“Okay,” she sighs. “Come on, I got an audio-description Silence of the Lambs and too much popcorn to eat on my own.”

“I hate horror movies,” Sokka mumbles, but he follows her inside regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty to my beta fensandmarshes for reading through this also he has an account u should check him out he makes the good shit
> 
> leave comments for my soul pls


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka isn’t at the tea shop Friday morning.

Sokka isn’t at the tea shop Friday morning.

It’s what Zuko expected, really, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. He’d _liked_ Sokka, is the thing; liked the excited look he got in his eye when he rambled about his Engineering project, liked the dreamy smile he got sometimes when staring about the tea shop as Zuko bustled around serving customers, liked the way his stupid jokes always made Zuko laugh despite himself. There was something charming about Sokka that drew Zuko in like a moth to flame - the same thing that had his mornings with Sokka studying become the highlight of his days for those first few weeks of Sokka’s visits to the _Jasmine Dragon_.

He hadn’t meant to lie to Sokka. He really hadn’t - he’d assumed the other boy knew his name, and simply hadn’t heard of him. That was stupid, he now realizes, to think that any former student of Ba Sing Se High wouldn’t know of him, Zuko: the crown prince of Caldera Academy’s endless efforts to crush Ba Sing Se student spirit into the ground at every opportunity.

Caldera Academy and Ba Sing Se High hated each other with the kind of passion that had, at many points, made Zuko suspect that, were the two student bodies placed in the same gymnasium, things would end with a pile of bodies and possibly a pig head on a stick. It was the kind of constant, raw, simmering fury that came from years, even _decades_ of rivalry that slowly gathered and grew like clouds before a storm. And it was in Zuko’s high school years, that the storm had come to a head and very nearly boiled over. All that heat and fury and pressure, Ozai’s watchful gaze burning into Zuko’s back at every match and event and game, like a fire slowly burning through Zuko’s spine: Zuko had felt like the water in the midst of the storm cloud. Electric fury meeting scalding pressure from all sides. Hundreds of high school students all focusing their anger into the easiest point of conflict to pinpoint: Zuko, champion of their leading martial arts team, entering the fighting ring. He was the magma crushed at the bottom of the volcano, heat near to boiling over as he struggled to hold it in: his entire four years of high school had been a constant dance with danger. Waiting for the tipping moment that would unravel his ragged edges and send him plunging over the caldera walls to destroy all that was left of the nightmare he called a childhood. 

The past year he’d spent with Iroh, he’d begun to feel like the pressure was finally fading. Without Ozai’s gaze burrowing him into the dirt, without the screaming of several hundred high school students overseeing his every Kung Fu match - he felt lighter, cooler, less like a bundle of dynamite set to explode. Like a whole and singular being, not a clusterfuck of mistakes and missteps with only his anger left to hold him together.

Sokka had felt like the best of that. His presence was cooling, calming, like the rain amid the storm. He’d made Zuko laugh, or blush, or feel like his heart was going to skip right out of his chest, but he never made Zuko feel _angry_. He never made Zuko feel like the world was bearing down around him, like every passing person was waiting for the moment Zuko snapped.

Zuko could count on one hand the number of people who made him feel that way.

And now one of them was gone. Left, probably forever, because he finally put two and two together and recognized the clumsy, quick-tempered tea shop boy as the same thundering stormcloud that had spent four years as the champion of the Caldera Academy kung fu team.

It’s almost the end of his shift, and for the first time in months, Zuko feels like he’s teetering on the edge of a cliff. Off-balance, a little disoriented. It shouldn’t matter, it really shouldn’t - Sokka hadn’t been his boyfriend, or his _anything,_ really, as that would imply Zuko had some sort of claim to his company. But Zuko _hadn’t_. Sokka had just been someone who talked with him during his morning shift, and distracted him when he was meant to be helping customers. 

His shift ends right about twelve, as he finishes mopping up the last of the spilled tea and leaves the broom to rest against the storage closet wall. Zuko hangs up his apron, greets Iroh on his way into the kitchen, and at exactly twelve o’five descends through the rickety wooden door through the back entrance of the tea shop into the alley adjacent to the counter windows. It’s a nice day out, sunny with a hint of autumn breeze in the air, and a few shafts of light dodge the rooftops to grace the steps of the tea shop exit. Zuko stops for a moment, pausing to check his phone as he stands in the warmth of the sun bathing the bottom of the staircase, and is there only a few moments when someone calls his name.

It’s Sokka.

Walking from the other end of the ally, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes trained on Zuko - looking pleased, if somewhat anxious - to see him.

Zuko swallows, standing still, and begins to feel as though something is trapped inside his chest, wings beating to get free.

“Hey, Zuko,” Sokka says, for the third time, finally coming to a halt a few feet from the staircase. “I, uh, I knew you got off at twelve so I sorta - swapped my shifts to come talk to you -” he blushes, suddenly, red crawling over his cheeks as he cuts himself off and reroutes. “I mean, apologize. I was gonna apologize, and I didn’t want to do it in the middle of your workday, so. Um. Sorry if that was, weird, or stalkery, or -”

“It’s fine,” Zuko surprises himself by saying. His voice, somehow, holds steady. “What did you 

want to talk about?”

Sokka wavers for a moment, as if steeling himself. “Um,” he begins, “Yesterday, with Toph - I sort of, thought I owed you an explanation - I don’t know your name? I mean. I didn’t, until Toph sorta cleared things up - that was pretty shitty of me, and I know I should’ve asked, but I’m kind of crap at that kind of thing, and I kept thinking it would come up naturally -” He stutters for a moment, as if unsure how to turn his ramblings into a coherent thought.

“It’s fine,” Zuko interrupts. “Don’t - it happens, I get it.” 

If he felt disoriented before, it’s nothing compared to now - he’s entirely off center. No aspects of the situation as he thought he understood it fit a scenario in which Sokka, for some bizarre reason, approaches _him_ to apologize.

“That wasn’t what I was here for, though.” Sokka fidgets uncomfortably. “I sort of said some stuff about you, I don’t know if you recall -” (Zuko snorts despite himself, causing Sokka to blush a deeper red) “- because I didn’t realize you were, uh, you, and I wanted to apologize for that? But also talk about it? Maybe? I -” he lapsed helplessly into silence, giving Zuko a sort of helpless look, as through drowning in his own end of the conversation. Zuko decided to take pity and cast him a line.

“You called me an asshole, I think,” Zuko recalls. “And said no one would want to talk to me. You weren’t really, um. Wrong, considering everything I was in high school. That’s what I - that’s what Toph talked to me about, and if you’re looking for an apology I’ll - I mean, I’m sorry about everything I did, I really am-”

Sokka blinks at him, eyes large and owlish. “Oh,” he says, “Oh, I - that wasn’t really what I meant, actually. I was going to apologize for insulting you because you’ve not done anything to me directly and it was kind of uncalled for, but - while we’re at it - can we talk about high school? I’d like to talk about high school.”

Sokka inches forward - a singular step that suddenly has Zuko hyper-aware of every movement he makes, every twitch of his expression, every fumble of his hands on his phone case. He swallows, feeling the chill of nervous energy clash with the automatic rush of warmth that comes with the sound of Sokka’s voice. 

“Okay,” Zuko begins, then pauses nervously before continuing. “I. High school. Which - which part did you want to talk about?”

“I’ve heard a lot from my friends Aang and Katara about you,” Sokka says. “About - how you acted towards them, and how hostile and angry you were - you really scared Aang a few times, what with the window thing, and - you threatened his dog a few times?”

Sokka’s voice isn’t angry, or accusing - just slightly sad, as though thinking about the fear Zuko had put his friends through is dampening his mood. “The thing is,” he continues, voice somewhat hesitant - “That doesn’t remind me of you, really. The you that I know. You’ve never seemed cruel or dismissive or anything like how they described it. And I always hated you from the things I heard, but - I’ve really liked talking to you, Zuko, and getting to know you - I mean - I mean _really_ liked it.” The blush is back, and more fierce, but Sokka’s expression still isn’t unhappy. Self conscious, perhaps, but his eyes are trained on Zuko as though he wishes he could catch Zuko’s every movement and hang onto it. Zuko feels the warm feeling in his chest heat, despite himself, as he catches onto Sokka’s meaning.

“Yeah,” Zuko admits, throat suddenly dry. “Yeah, I think I did too.”

The admission earns a flicker of a smile. “Okay,” Sokka says. “Then - I dunno, do you want to get a coffee, or something, and talk things over?”

“As in a - a date?” Zuko huffs, a laugh edging the corners of his tone - a part of him is genuinely curious, but the rest of him is scoffing - because surely that can’t be what Sokka meant - 

“If you wanted,” Sokka says, and the self-deprecating laugh dies in Zuko’s throat. He stares, swallows, then finds himself smiling against all odds.

“That sounds nice,” he tells Sokka softly. “I’d - yeah, okay.”

A smile creeps onto Sokka’s face, and then a grin. The sunlight has faded from the steps, leaving a cold wind whistling through the alleyway, but Zuko hardly notices through the bundle of warmth sitting low in his chest.

They meet at the park the next day. Sokka brings coffee, purely out of a determination to be the one who fetches the drinks at least once. It’s sunny again but still brisk, and the air is chilly against the hand Zuko extends from his bomber jacket to hold the drink Sokka hands him.

“Thanks,” Zuko says, and then raises an eyebrow self consciously when Sokka stares at him in response a few moments longer than necessary.

Sokka laughs awkwardly and looks away, eying some children playing ball in a field. “Sorry,” he says. “I guess I’m not used to seeing you without the apron.”

“I can go grab it, if you’re that invested,” Zuko offers in jest, and Sokka snorts.

“No,” he says. “The jacket - it’s - um, a good look on you.”

Zuko feels the comfortable flush in his cheeks again, warm against the chilly autumn wind. He opens his mouth, about to try and come up with - and inevitably flub - something clever to say, but Sokka beats him to it.

“You wanna walk somewhere? They’ve got a few paths, you choose which,” Sokka offers. “I think that one -” he points towards an open path that dips through a patch of greenery. “-leads to the bit where people bring their dogs, the one by the river. The others...well, there’s a rose garden, but it’s usually dead this time of year.”

“Let’s go that way, then,” Zuko suggests, gesturing towards the path into greenery - and Sokka agrees. They start walking at an amiable pace along the field, as Sokka waves to every stranger in sight.

Conversation is simple, at first. Lighthearted. It flows easily, something Zuko’s not used to - he keeps pausing, mid sentence, half expecting to have to cut himself off or reroute his train of thought to something more suitable to Caldera Academy student spirit - but then he rarely needs to change anything, because Sokka’s walking by him and listening to him with this intense expression of interest. And even when Sokka starts rambling about something completely unrelated to Zuko’s usual lines of enthusiasm - Engineering, for example, or his boomerang hobby, or his brief stint into falconry - it’s always enrapturing, snagging Zuko’s attention like a cat to a ball of yarn. Listening to Sokka talk feels intoxicating, like Zuko’s dizzy with it, despite thinking as clearly as he ever has.

But as easy as the conversation flows, it snags for a moment. Fifteen or so minutes in. Hits a gap, and pauses - so Zuko takes advantage of the comfortable lapse of silence to drop the other shoe, because someone had to let it fall. 

“We should talk about it,” he says, and Sokka glances over with a raised eyebrow. Zuko takes a breath. “High school,” he continues - “we should talk about it.”  
Sokka lowers his disposable coffee cup a bit, and tilts his head at Zuko. They’re nearing the bit of the park with the dogs, now, despite having slowed their pace - Zuko knows because he can hear the barking. “Which part would you like to talk about?” Sokka asks, giving Zuko that owl-eyed stare.

“I was going to apologize,” Zuko says. “To your friends, and also to you, for causing you that anxiety. That was what your friend came to speak to me about. She thought I ought to try and make amends, and she was right - my behavior on the Kung Fu team was wrong, and dishonourable, and I should have tried to fix it long ago, rather than avoiding it as soon as Fa - as soon as I graduated. Sooner.”

Sokka hums his consensus. “Yeah, dude,” he agrees. “It was pretty fucked up. That was partially why I came to talk to you the other day. Partially to apologize for calling you a dick and everything, because you’ve always been pretty polite to me, but - look, Aang and Katara....they’re my best friend and my sister, and I would do _anything_ to protect them. That includes kicking someone’s ass if he tries to hurt them.”

Zuko tilts his head down, in acknowledgement - not quite hanging it, but it feels the same.

“But,” Sokka continues, “and this bit’s the more important part - I also think that people can change. My friend Aang taught me that, actually - he’s a dork, but he’s smarter about people than I am. So I figured I oughta give you a chance. And…” Sokka glances to the side, at Zuko, and smiles a bit. “I think I was right.”

“I hope you were,” Zuko says softly. They’ve reached the gated bit of the park, where the dogs are set loose - he flips the lock open and holds it open for Sokka as they pass through. This bit of the path is sunnier, out of the shrubbery, and park benches are scattered along its flanks to host visitors of varying ages and species. 

Sokka gives a longing glance over the sunlit field. “I wish I had a dog,” he comments, a bit dolefully - “After Hawky nothing feels the same, though.”

“Hawky?”

“The falcon I mentioned,” Sokka explains. “Well, hawk. Same difference. Did you have any pets as a kid?”

Zuko shakes his head. “No. Well - we had some turtles and ducks here and there, in the pond behind our house - but nothing else. My father didn’t like animals and my sister liked dropkicking them whenever I wasn’t paying her enough attention, so it was probably a good thing.”

“ _Dropkicking_ them?” Sokka laughs, an eyebrow raised. 

_He thinks I’m kidding_ , Zuko realizes, and swallows his elaboration. He smiles, even though it feels brittle and fake, and laughs it off along with Sokka. A powerful gust of wind takes a strand of Sokka’s hair and plays with it, dancing with it in the breeze.

“Shame I never got a dog, though,” Sokka says, staring off into the middle distance. “I would’ve been good with them, I’m great with - woah!”

There is a blur of gray as something drops out of the air and collides with Zuko’s forehead, and the world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lookit me!!! updating!!! fair warning, school's a bitch and i'm back to irl learning, so update schedule may be wonky from now on. but there's definitely still gonna be updates if u leave me comments which give me the serotonin which i need to write 
> 
> credit to my beta fensandmarshes for being rude to me and also i love him


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mid-air contraption hits his forehead so hard he reels back, flailing and clutching at his forehead, as Sokka dives to catch him and pull him upright again with an arm around his ribs. As Zuko wobbles to his feet, the machine jerks back and settles into the grass, blades slowing to a more comfortable rotation.

The mid-air contraption hits his forehead so hard he reels back, flailing and clutching at his forehead, as Sokka dives to catch him and pull him upright again with an arm around his ribs. As Zuko wobbles to his feet, the machine jerks back and settles into the grass, blades slowing to a more comfortable rotation.

Zuko stares. “That’s a drone,” he interprets, feeling wildly dizzy; “That’s, like, a really tiny fucking drone. Ow.” He glances around wildly, half expecting a second drone to dive out of midair and bonk him again.

It doesn’t come. Instead, as Sokka straightens up, a hand still lurking steadying on the small of Zuko’s back - as if expecting him to fall again, or as though he’d hardly remembered it was there - a voice comes echoing across the green lawn, and he glances around, Zuko’s gaze following his a moment later.

Someone is running towards them across the grass, dwarfed by a thick orange jacket. For a moment, the approaching figure looks like an old man - head shaved to the point of near baldness, short spindly and fragile looking frame - and then he comes the rest of the way into view, and Zuko realizes it’s a teenager.

An achingly familiar, still startlingly recognizable teenager, shouting rapid apologies as he runs, who stumbles to a halt before them with his remote control clutched in his hand. 

Aang is still as soft and deceptively skinny as ever, puppy dog gray-black eyes so big the entire sky swims within them, and his expression of apologetic horror slowly shifts as he glances from Sokka to Zuko. He looks surprised, at first, then hurt, then defensive, a frown inching across his face as he takes a step forward, eyes darting between the two of them.

“Sokka,” Aang says, then - voice changing - “Zuko.”

Sokka glances at Zuko, then back at Aang. His hand is still steady and gentle against the small of Zuko’s back, and Aang’s gaze lingers at the contact for a second too long. Sokka yanks it back, as if burned, and Zuko feels a painful, sickly feeling in his chest at the startled urgency of the movement. He takes a minute step to his left, inching away from Sokka, and feels off-kilter as he moves. His head throbs painfully where it was hit.

“Hi, Aang,” Sokka says, voice pitched a little too loudly to be natural. He sounds awkward, off-kilter, and Zuko can practically hear the heartbeat thudding in Sokka’s chest mixing with the pounding in his own ears. “Fancy seeing you, uh, here.”

“I was gonna apologize for hitting you with my drone,” Aang mumbles, eying the machine still laying desolately in the grass. “I didn’t mean to, it got caught in the wind and I couldn’t steer it back.”

“That’s alright,” Zuko says, surprising himself with his voice’s own steadiness. The world around them feels strangely quiet, all the sudden, speaking to Aang in a grassy, sunlit park - practically alone - without the roar of bleachers around them or the jeering of the Caldera Academy kung fu team. Aang looks so much smaller out of uniform.

“So what are you, um,” Aang begins, voice breaking into a squeak on the last note. He cuts himself off, clears his throat, and begins again. “So, what are you. Doing here? In the park, with, um,” He gives Sokka an oddly intense side eye, as though trying to telepathically communicate with him. “Sokka.”

Zuko meets Sokka’s eyes for an unbearable moment and then snaps his gaze away. His eyes hurt with the movement. “We were talking about, um, things,” he mumbles, trying to piece together a story that won’t get Sokka too deep in shit. He thinks of Azula, and how she would react if she could see him here -  _ fraternizing with the enemy _ , she would say, in an imitation of Ozai’s formal language so oblivious it would seem to border on mockery to those who don’t know her so well that her spectre lurks in their head, free of charge. “High school, I guess,” Zuko continues, having to focus on every word. “We ran into each other at a tea shop and thought it might be a, uh, good idea.”

“...Oh,” Aang says. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sokka agrees. “Um, yeah, we thought it might be good to talk through some things? From high school? Seeing as - you know, it didn’t go so well-”

“It didn’t really go so well, no,” Aang mumbles, a little mournfully. Zuko grimaces internally. 

“Sorry,” Zuko offers, then mentally smacks himself upside the head, because the hell is  _ sorry _ supposed to mean anyway?  _ Sorry  _ for what, years of torment and over the top competition and mental instability unleashed as a weapon upon everyone who ventured near him and oh yeah, he may have threatened Aang a few times here or there, but sure,  _ sorry  _ is supposed to fix it all? The fuck?

But Aang looks surprised and then somewhat gratified, at least marginally. “Um, okay,” he says, “I forgive yo- wait. No. No I don’t.” He cuts himself off as though scolding his own automatic reaction. “I mean, Toph says I need to work on not forgiving people so fast even when they’ve really hurt me and haven’t actually made up for it. So um. I don’t forgive you.”

“That’s fair,” Zuko says, a little bemused. He sways slightly

“Thanks!” Aang responds, and then his expression melts into suspicion. “Wait, is this a trick? Why are you - okay, Sokka, blink once if you’re being held hostage.”

Both of them turn to stare at Sokka. Sokka, looking alarmed, stretches his eyes as comically wide as they’ll go and shakes his head frantically. “Nope. Not being held hostage.” 

“Huh,” Aang says, squinting at him, then shrugging and turning back to Zuko. “Okay then. What’s with the whole, um. Change of….plans? I thought you  _ hated _ me and Sokka. I mean, you  _ did _ hate us, you mentioned it a lot. Maybe a little….too much.”

“I guess I’ve had some time to think,” Zuko says, evading Aang’s quizzical gaze. He takes a deep breath and watches a cloud drift by overhead. “Away from school, and the pressure of it all. I’ve changed how I look at things and I’m trying to change how I act, too.” The word come out oddly recited, as though some part of him has been practicing all this time. He grimaces as his head continues to throb.

Aang is silent. Staring at him. Zuko feels a little sickly, uncomfortable, and he tears his gaze from the sky to rest on Sokka. Sokka looks beautiful, here, standing on the park trail framed by a vast blue-green horizon line. His hair, an undercut tied back in a ponytail, has come loose at the edges and fringes of it are falling into his face, brushing his eyelashes. Zuko stares at him, at the sunlight silhouetting his frame with gilded-yellow edges, and swallows as a wave of nausea overcomes him.

“I gotta go,” he manages, and turns to jog away.

~~~

Sokka catches up with him outside the park edges, wheezing as though he’d been sprinting all the way there. He chokes Zuko’s name breathlessly as Zuko is stepping out of the park entrance into the city-street beyond, and stumbles to a halt by Zuko’s side, resting his hands on his knees and hunching slightly. Sokka wheezes for a long moment as Zuko stands frozen on the sidewalk, staring at him with the air of a rabbit caught by a hunter. He doesn’t know why he did it, why he left so abruptly or felt ill so quickly, only that right now his head is swimming and his forehead is bruised and the chill of cars rushing by the sidewalk is creeping under his clothes and sending shivers down his spine. He takes a step backwards, away, and then another - only for Sokka to straighten abruptly and stare at him.

“Um,” Sokka says, looking concerned - “Are you okay?”

Zuko stutters his way through a few answers, stumbling in search of a suitable answer, and at last settles on “Sorry.”

“I didn’t - what?” Sokka frowns at him, disconcerted. “Shit, you don’t look okay. You look a little, um, fucked up. Did Aang give you a concussion? He feels awful, I swear, he usually doesn’t fly that thing when it’s this windy - shit, okay, do I need to take you to a hospital?”

Zuko swallows. Shakes his head. “No,” he says, “Sorry. I’m okay. This is just a lot. I think I have to go, I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure?” Sokka takes a step forward, only a few feet away now, and Zuko nods again.

“I haven’t talked to Aang in a long time,” he explains, struggling for the right words. “I think it’s - I’m just going to go back to the tea shop, if that’s okay, Uncle will be wondering.”

Sokka stares at him for a long moment, head cocked slightly. “Okay,” he says cautiously, “If you’re sure. Your uncle will be home? To look after you?”

Zuko nods mutely.

“Okay,” Sokka says, for what feels like the fifteenth time that conversation. “Yeah, I’ll call you a cab. Give me your number in case you need to call me, alright?”

So that’s the end of that.

He gets a text on the way there. It’s from Sokka, and Zuko stares at it for a solid five minutes before closing his phone with the text unanswered.

**873-283-2944:** hey zuko, its sock a

**873-283-2944:** socks 

**873-283-2944:** yknow.

**873-283-2944:** hope you’re doing alright. aang wants to say he’s really sorry for hitting you and also would like to talk to you sometime if that’s ok.

**873-283-2944:** he’s gonna be at the local baguazhang fighting ring from 2-6 tomorrow if you want to pop in then or like i can give you his number or maybe you don’t want to talk to him at all which is up to you 

**873-283-2944: a** nyway hope you’re okay pls let me know ok?

  
  


Uncle is waiting when Zuko gets back to the  _ Jasmine Dragon _ , sitting in the sunlit wooden living room of the upstairs apartment with a newspaper and a cup. The couch faces the stairwell doorway, so Iroh needs only to flick his gaze upwards as the door swings open to glimpse the bruise on Zuko’s forehead. 

He sets his newspaper down at once, a concerned frown sneaking across his face, and watches Zuko make his way to the kitchen isle and fetch a glass of water with a tilted head, as if analyzing what he sees. He doesn’t speak until Zuko has drained the entire glass.

“You’re hurt, nephew,” he observes, then, “did you get in a fight?”

Zuko sets the glass down a little too hard to seem natural. “No,  _ uncle _ , I didn’t get in a fight,” he rasps, staring resolutely at the granite behind the sink. “I appreciate your confidence in me.”

“Oh, Zuko, I wasn’t trying to imply anything,” Iroh says, voice gentle and stinging. “I apologize. I was simply concerned.”

“I’m fine,” Zuko hisses, hand clenching on the glass. He wants to throw something so badly the urge wells up in him, all pent up energy like a predator before the lunge. He wants to scream and rage at everyone - at Uncle, for still thinking of him as the troubled delinquent who got into fights after school ended, at Toph, for demanding he face the people he’d wronged, at Aang for being so kind instead of spitting and snarling at him like he had every right to do. 

At Sokka, for being so kind, and yet such a reminder of what Zuko had fought so hard to put behind him.

He hears Uncle rising from the couch and doesn’t look up, just stands there, hunched over the sink with his knuckles white around the drinking cup. He doesn’t look up as Uncle gently pries the glass from his cup, nor as Uncle turns him about and clasps him close. Warm and gentle and still there against all odds. 

He just closes his eyes and bites back the tears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tysm for reading pls leave comments to make me happee


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